


Tales of Themiscyra - (an unfinished Wonder Woman WIP)

by bellepeppertronix



Category: Wonder Woman (2009), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-18
Updated: 2015-02-18
Packaged: 2018-03-13 14:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3384752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellepeppertronix/pseuds/bellepeppertronix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story of Themiscyra; of Diana before she was Wonder Woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tales of Themiscyra - (an unfinished Wonder Woman WIP)

The last kick took Diana's legs from beneath her in a clean sweep, her back meeting the sand of the arena with a sifting, breath-flattening thud. For a split second she lay choking on her own forced breath, before lunging to one side--too late to avoid the flat of the blade that came to rest against her cheek.  
"Do you yield?" the woman standing above her shifted her weight, pressing the blade harder against her cheek. Diana did not flinch.

She smiled, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the midday sun.  
"I yield," she said, and the other woman caught her hand. The world around her somersaulted on its axis, and then she was upright, sand sifting down through the folds of her tunic, out of her hair, into the runnel down her back where she could feel it sticking in a pool just above the line of her belt.  
"If I didn't know any better," the other woman was saying, "I'd say you _LET_ me win three of these four sparring matches."

Diana shrugged easily, strode a few paces off and retrieved her sword from where one of Artemis's sweeping swings had flung it. She stuck the wooden blade through her yellow rope belt almost as an afterthought.  
"I have been...preoccupied, of late," she said. For the first time since they had stepped down into the arena, she allowed herself to look around. 

Pairs of women such as themselves--one slightly elder, one younger--were spaced around, sparring with wooden short swords and bucklers, or else with staves. All were dressed alike in plain linen short tunics, bare-legged and bare-armed, rope belts tied around their waists and rope sandals on their feet. 

The arena's walls were pale tawny stone, big blocks set together with care, but unpainted, and utterly stark. Above the walls--which were but waist-high, as this was a mere training arena--rows and rows of massive steps rose in a semi-circle, acting as seats. Elder women and the injured sat there, looking down on the sparring partners as they moved together.  
The far side of the arena--to their backs--was a flat wall of stone that ascended three stories to the rough, parapeted balcony where the queen would sit, during the Provings, the Tests, and the Competitions. The area was bare for now, deserted, shaded in the sharp, crisp-cut shadows of high noon. 

Diana looked over all this as she huffed to catch her breath, before Artemis' voice pulled her back to where she stood.  
"So you have been," Artemis laughed. 

Diana shifted. There was a good deal of sand worked up between her right sandal and her foot.  
"But what can you have been thinking about, hm? One of those library books?" and her mouth had a laughing twist, but her gray-green eyes were hard.  
Diana looked away, shrugging. "I enjoy them."  
Artemis laughed outright. "That's fine and good, but it's unlike you to let your mind wander during a match." She looked her up and down almost archly. "Were I anyone but your regular sparring partner, I'd not notice that you're getting soft."

Diana smirked herself. She murmured something softly, her lips barely moving.  
Artemis had to lean closer, her face knitting in confusion. "What?"  
"The soft one is the last one to the baths!"

And they were off like a pair of young greyhounds, tearing out of the arena and up the steps in galloping strides. They passed guards who squared their shoulders and bowed their heads as Diana sped by, and they did not see the raised eyebrows; they flew through the market, where old women were selling melons and bunches of grapes and chickens. Where they passed, the people stared--two girls, almost grown women, running like children--one with a tail of coppery hair, the other with a tail of jet-black. But no one said anything. 

~

"I do wonder which of us is the soft one," Diana mused. She was pulling a comb through her dripping hair, her neck bent at an angle and her long hair caught in her fist as she combed the ends free of tangles.  
"You are the faster runner, perhaps," Artemis conceded. "But I do not think that will serve you well on the field of battle."  
Diana snorted softly and finished her hair, raking her fingers through to separate it into three segments. 

"Unless you believe it appropriate to try and outrun opponents one should meet in combat?" Artemis asked. Her voice climbed to cattish points; Diana rolled her eyes.  
"I would not flee on the field of battle," she said. "Only from an overzealous cousin whose most recent sparring match left her smelling like an unwashed plough-horse."  
And while they were swearing at one another good-naturedly, Diana finished braiding her hair and tossed the heavy black rope back over her shoulder. Artemis combed hers and shook the water from it.

This finished, they both stood back side-by-side and appraised their cubbies, Diana sighing.  
They stood in the antechamber of the public baths, a large echoing room of unadorned pale beige stone where other women stood in various stages of undress. Behind them, up against the wall nearest the open doorway, there ran long, low wooden benches with all manner of sundry parcels piled upon them or stowed beneath them. Before them, rising up the entire wall, were rows and rows of wooden cubbyholes, most containing folded garments.

A lone veteran guarded the door, an irregular shaft of sunlight from one of the high narrow windows throwing glints on her metal leg, the rivets at the joint of her artificial knee. Her face was so stern, her posture so rigid, and her uniform so immaculate that she might have been a statue dressed in armor. Stamped on the metal of her breastplate, just above her heart, was an embossed symbol of Themiscyra.  
When her eyes met Diana's, there was the barest dip of her helmeted head, before she returned to staring straight ahead of herself. 

Girls their age were just now streaming in, pulling off padded sparring helmets and gloves, discarding practice swords and staves on the benches by the door, or in the cubbyholes. Older veterans were leaving in groups of two and three, women whose hard eyes traveled over the girls' coltish, sweat-lithe bodies with unreadable expressions, and moved on.  
"We ought to have brought something to change into besides our training tunics," Diana muttered.  
"Ah, well." Artemis said. She was already shrugging loose from her towel, reaching up into her cubby to pull out her long roll of linen binding-cloth.

" _You_ would walk around in a hair shirt and not even mind," Diana muttered. She grimaced and unfoled her own sparring tunic, holding it at arms' length. It was stiff with dried sweat and sand and visibly creased around the waist where her belt had been tied; she sighed and pulled off her towel, pulling it over her head.  
"A soldier has no time for worrying over idle pleasantries such as what her clothing may be made of," Artemis said. "She ought not waste mental energies thinking such frivolous thoughts."

She finished winding the binding around her ribs, tucked the edge snug into it, and stretched to settle things. Diana glanced at her once, impassively, before speaking. "That was lyrical, pure poetry, cousin. Tell me, which training manual is that from?"  
"The selfsame manual that suggests all women bind their breasts or risk injury," Artemis said.  
"In battle, to be sure, I would keep them tied up," Diana shrugged.  
"You are too careless. You can never know when you might need to fight," Artemis said. She pulled on her own tunic, not seeming to mind the chevrons of sweat still darkening the neck, the armpits. 

Diana scoffed softly. "We're walking back to the barracks. If we encounter anything more threatening than meddlesome old peddlers, I'll _eat_ my binder."

 

Outside, an armless old woman was bowing and mumbling over a chipped wooden bowl, already half full of coppers. Her tunic was filthy and ragged, and through the holes, Diana could see that her under-tunic was ragged, filthy and grimy with wear.  
Diana kicked off her left sandal and pinched a coin out of a secret pouch in the sole.  
"Here, Old Auntie," she murmured, "May this aid you in some way."

Diana saw Artemis' eyes widen as she watched her drop a gold coin--thick as a cracker--into the copper bowl. She was expecting what would come next.  
The woman nodded her head, smiling, revealing her teeth to be long and age-gray in her sunken gums.  
"Many battles, my strong girl," she said. Her voice was clear and soft, too high to belong to any foot-soldier. "And many victories."  
"Thank you, Old Auntie, and may the grass of the Elysian Fields be sweet and cool beneath your feet when you walk there." Diana said. 

As they turned, Aremis leaned towards Diana and elbowed her in the side.  
"Why did you give that old wretch a gold piece? It's plain to see she doesn't deserve it!"  
"So?"  
"So if you can't swing a sword, you shouldn't lift a spoon," Artemis said.  
When Diana looked over at her, she was fuming. "You ought to go back and demand your money back. Leave her a bronze piece, at the most. She ought to be ashamed, begging hard-earned coin off good working women! People like her ought to have died with honor, instead of lingering on and burdening the rest of us. She's taking food out of deserving mouths."

"I will not go back. And she is not! She is old, and she has clearly fought all the battles she will ever need to fight. She gave her _arms_ , cousin. Is not that enough?" Diana shook her head.  
A moment later a voice rose above the crowd--clear, water-bright and liquid, rising into their ears. 

They both turned to see the old woman there, no longer bobbing like a broken doll, but singing, her uplifted lined face beatifically clear. Diana felt something wash over her--a chill ran up her arms all the way to her ears, and she felt rooted to the spot.  
She was singing the victory hymn of Themiscyra, a song they all heard from the cradle.  
Artemis elbowed her again, shaking her head. 

"If she had practiced her shield-work as finely as she has honed her voice, maybe she would yet have arms to earn a proper living with."  
"Artemis!" Diana's eyes and mouth were wide.  
"I am not being heartless! Only think how hard it will be during the great battle, when we will all be called to fight," she said.

"She has already given her _arms_ for the queen," Diana muttered. "Could the queen truly demand more of someone than that?"

~

The Grand Library was aptly named--its rooftop, tiled in green-aged copper tiles, rose loftily above the tops of the surrounding oak trees. 

Four rows of columns held up the long stretch of the roof over its stairs, the roof overhead throwing cool gray shadows down onto the steps down below. Groups of women sat or lounged on the steps, talking and reading; they were the sorts who belonged to good families, who had been gently-bred and treated their training duties as unpleasant chores that had to be done before they could get back to their real lives, which they spent here.  
As Diana climbed the steps, many stood and bowed; she returned these with nods and waves and (she thought) appropriate smiles. 

She had changed into a short tunic of red linen, which she wore over yellow leather sandals whose tie-straps ended in red coral beads that clicked pleasantly when she walked. Over the tunic she wore a belt of gold silk cord, and coral bracelets on either wrist. 

She had had to sneak out of the palace, past guards who were like older sisters (and therefore disinclined to immediately tell her mother that she was not there). Their small smiles and tacit, slow nods were enough permission for her.

Now, in the cool shadow of the great library, she felt her worries of being caught evaporate. Just being near the building was enough to lift her spirits, to drive away the distraction that was clouding her mind.

Its facade was faced with bas-reliefs, beautifully-painted and carved images of the cycles of the year: women sowing grain in early spring; plucking weeds from the fields in summer; harvesting in autumn, and then leading oxen to the fallow fields in wintertime.  
And yet, immediately in front of the central doorway arch there was a statue of her mother, Queen Hippolyta, in all her warlike glory: armored and helmeted, spear raised, her face an impassive scowl. 

The statue was nearly twice as tall as a woman, and raised on a waist-high pediment.  
There were grimy spots on the statue’s booted feet, where pilgrims praying for success in some venture had come to seek her blessing and rubbed for luck.

Diana sighed and shifted slightly, adjusting the bag she had slung over her shoulder. It contained a dagger, her favorite sling, and a small pouch of round metal slugs; at the very least, when her mother caught her, she would not be able to scold Diana for being unarmed.

 

Inside, there were rows and rows of oak tables, with benches running their lengths. High windows admitted late noon sunlight in at slanted angles, butter-colored and filled with sifting dust-motes. There was a quiet chatter of voices.

Women sat at the tables, working quietly, reading or writing. She walked quickly past everyone--nodding once at the guard, who was a silver-haired woman with a dirk strapped to her hip.  
The older woman gave her a conspiratorial wink as she passed.

 

Behind the simple gray draperies along the back wall, there was a doorway with a staircase in it. She took the stairs in leaps and bounds, surprising two scribes with ink-splotched arms and stained gray tunics, who scurried out of her way with lowered eyes and murmured ‘Excuse me, your Highness’es.  
On the second story the staircase opened into the Room of Archives--where she worked, when she could get away from training.  
“Mistress Librarian! I am here! I am--”

“So I see, my lady Princess,” Athena said, laughing. Her eyes were sea-gray, her brown hair pulled back in a sensible bun. She wore a charcoal-colored chiton, gold owl-headed fibulae glinting from either shoulder. A chatelaine around her waist jingled faintly with keys, scissors, a small dagger.  
She was straightening up from where she had been bent over a table, stylus in one hand and freshly-scraped wax tablet in the other.  
“What work is there to be done today?” Diana asked, grinning.

Athena smiled, shaking her head. “I wish all my library scribes had half your eagerness, Princess.” Then, gesturing down at the scroll, she said, “This parchment is becoming too fragile to use. We must transcribe it into books.”  
“Oh!” Diana said, leaning closer. “What is it?”  
“A treatise on proper archery technique,” Athena said, exactly as Diana stepped up beside her.  
“Oh...” Diana said, and did not manage to hide the face she was making.  
Athena laughed aloud. 

“You know, I believe you would have been happy, had this been an archaic cookbook, or a guide to cobbling, or even an almanac.” Athena said.  
Diana shrugged, smiling herself. “I find everything about life to be fascinating. Swordplay and archery and horseback skills my mind is already stuffed to bursting with. I am sick to death of parry-parry-thrust-thrust, of endlessly hunting for spent arrows, of riding my horses through obstacle courses. If i never see another straw-stuffed training dummy with a painted-on menacing face, I could die happily.”  
Athena’s laughter died to small chuckles, a smaller smile. “You must be careful not to let your mother overhear you, your Highness.” 

Diana shrugged a little. “There must be more to life than ceaselessly training and sparring. I mean no disrespect to my mother, only to speak my mind. You are the only one I may speak to freely; my cousin has a mind for nothing but warcraft.”  
She said this in flat, distracted tones, as she looked out over the table at the other ancient texts Athena had laid out there. 

There was one scroll with very badly-damaged handles, scorch marks running down one edge.  
“What is this one about?” she asked.

**Author's Note:**

> So I have a massive story arc behind this and, as usual, it got away from me and I am STILL working on this. I actually started writing this last year and have been adding bits and pieces to it as I go. I am sorry that all this time has not yielded a more complete story, but I hope you enjoy what I have written so far!


End file.
